Its time I answer some questions

I have been mercilessly tagged and awarded in the last one year. Ok. I was awarded only twice and tagged twice but I like to think that it was merciless. Feels good. And its my bloody blog so I will define what merciless means here.

I ignored the tags and awards for a long time but I had a dream last night in which a Tag and an Award took human forms and tried to strangulate me. They were crying while doing so and thus awoke my conscience. I promised them that I will honor them and hence this post.

I will try not to bore you with my answers.

U.S. Pandey who blogs at One Grain Amongst The Storm gave me the Liebster Award and here are the Q & As -

Top 4 authors, or photographers, you love

Charles Dickens (The first novel I read was an abridged version of Oliver Twist that I won in a debate competition in class 6. I don’t think there is any novel by dear CD that I haven’t read)

Arthur Conan Doyle (Ah! They don’t make them like him anymore. The Hound of Baskervilles and The Sign of Four are my all time favorites)

Orhan Pamuk (There is something very grounded in the way he writes his incredible stories)

J.M Coetzee (The most gifted writers of our times. Read Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace and you will know what I mean)

Top 4 Movies

Ok. That is a crazy question. Anyways, my top 4 movies are – Spirited Away, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shawshank Redemption, Amélie

Top 4 singers/albums

Kishore Kumar (For the sheer variety), Shreya Ghoshal (For the divine voice), Asha Bhosle (For those seductive punches), Mohammed Rafi (For melting my heart again and again)

What would you do if you were to be stopped from writing?

I will start painting.

Are you in favour of banning books?

God No! Adults write them and adults read them.

Are you in favour of capital punishment?

If we are absolutely sure that the person committed the crime, then Yes. If there is a 0.5% chance of his/her innocence, then No. You can’t bring back the dead.

Are you in favour of veils for women, as in hijab?

I am in favor of  religion not telling anyone what to wear.

Which is the best translated work (or works) you’ve read?

Night train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier

Moments you cherish.

My time spent in Manchester. It was the first time I realized that humans are capable of not littering the roads and piss on the walls and not honk and….I can go on and on.

Moments you’d rather forget.

One day I will gather the courage to write a blog post about it.

Is blogging for everyone?

No. Sustaining your creative streak is never easy.

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Tushar who blogs at My Life, My World gave me the same award as USP and here are the Q&As -

1. Why did you start blogging?

I was bored.

2. You are getting an all expenses paid trip for two to a place of your choice? Where will it be and with whom?

I need mountains around and loads of snow. Place doesn’t matter.

3. Dog or cat? And why?

Errr…none actually. I am not an animal person really. I like them though.

4. Half a million dollars for slogging for 6 months year or a week’s peace on the beaches of Bahamas?

Why is that even a question?

5. What is your deepest fear?

That one fine day, I will wake up to realize that I cannot get up from bed without anyone’s help. One day a nurse will take care of me while I lie on a bed.

6. How did you propose your girl/guy? Or how you plan to do so?

I am married and I didn’t propose. I just asked – So, what do you think? And she replied – Mm..Hm. And that was pretty much it.

7. One ‘Ctrl + Z’ moment of your life? Something you want to undo if you had a choice?

Loads of them. I have a fear that I will leave my zipper open one day. I will jump off a building if that happens.

8. Who is the most ‘marriage-able’ celebrity?

I don’t know. I don’t know any of them personally.

9. One thing that can take you to the ultimate heights of fame?

You mean people-trying-to-grope-me and tearing-off-my-clothes-in-public fame? I don’t want that.

10. Do you follow any sports, team, club or a person? Why this love started?

Hell no! I try not to follow anyone. I am not a stalker.

11. Did you like coming to this blog? And will you visit again?

Too personal!

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Afshan who blogs at The Pensive tagged me a long time back. She gave me 25 questions. 25!!!! Afshan, I can’t answer your questions right now with honesty because I will be lying in most of them. I will pick your tag later when I can give truthful answers. Thank you for tagging me though.

I love this aura of suspense that I have created!

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Reema who blogs at My Random Thoughts tagged me in the Stone Age. Here are the Q&As -

1) Your most beautiful post.

Costa Chatter – Sita and Draupadi - I found this series satisfying mainly because I can go back and read it without cringing.

2) Your most popular post

My most popular post was I am with about 1,25,000 hits. God knows why!

3) Your most helpful post

They were How to shop with a lady and stay sane & Facebook photos uploading etiquettes

4) Your most controversial post

I won’t call it controversial per se but a lot of people did not like what I wrote here – Why SBI is the worst bank of India.

5) A post whose success surprised you

The Hitchhikers Guide To A Sane Life. I don’t know why it was so popular back then and why I wrote it.

6) A post that you thought did not get the attention it deserved

Traffic control gadgets for the ASIRW (Average Stupid Indian Road Warrior). I poured my heart and soul into it and came up with such innovative ideas and no one read them.

7) A post which you are most proud of

I liked the caption posts I did a long time back – Fear and Have you ever…

I would like to thank all those who read the post till the end and if you have scrolled down and this is the first line you are reading then you missed all the gossip from my personal life. Also, I am not tagging everyone because honestly I don’t think there is anyone left.

And for those who awarded me -

image from here.

A house in the photographs

I believe that our home is like our mind. It turns overwhelming after a while. Maybe because of passage of time or because of the limited capability of our brain to run in a thousand different directions, we end up stacking a lot of memories in boxes and forget them. Ditto for our home.

But then sometimes, while staring at a drifting cloud or a bird going home, there are memories that rush back, memories that we had long forgotten, memories that surprise us because they are still unknowingly breathing inside us. It is a breathtaking moment when you wonder if a particular memory was actually a dream.

And you ask yourself – Did it actually happen?

I shifted home two years back. It was a painful experience. I had spent 25 years of my life in that house. The house has been a silent spectator of the emotions that everyone living in the house went through – bliss, heartache, gloom, love, togetherness, separation, marriage and death. The house was a member of the family; it was where everyone returned, where everyone found each other.

While I packed my life to move to a new (and bigger) shelter, I stumbled upon memories stacked away and forgotten. I opened boxes to have a look into the piece of the past they contained and was transported back. There were tears in my eyes when I fell upon a shoebox full of my collection of post-cards of Bollywood actors and actresses. Like every other teenager, I was madly in love with them. There was a shop that was a ten minutes walk from my home where a kind, obese uncle sat with his kind, obese son as I rummaged through the postcards for my picks.

My family was not rich. My father was barely able to meet ends and so the importance of money was etched in my mind from childhood. But then I had hobbies. So, I collected every single rupee that was given to me. Every coin added to my piggybank was yet another step towards acquiring a postcard, towards buying a second-hand novel from the Sunday Daryaganj market, towards getting that cassette recorded with the latest Bollywood songs from the local music corner, towards buying the latest comic book of my favorite superhero, towards buying Filmfare and reading all that our stars had to say. There were times when I had to wait for days to accumulate sufficient amount to buy a dream but the wait was always worth it.

My sister always wanted a Barbie – the new doll with wavy hair that had recently hit the market. She would look hungrily at the shiny dolls wearing glamorous clothes displayed in the windows of toy shops. Of course it was too expensive (Rs 100 a doll back then) and we could not afford it. The hair on her doll’s head was fewer in comparison and would come away after a few combs. I decided to make her happy. I took a nice, long needle and some spare wool (left from a hideous sweater that mom knitted for me) and started adding hair to her doll. I took off the head of the doll and pierced her head with the needle from inside. I then pulled it till the end of the wool and then snipped off the wool so that she now had a hair till her waist. I repeated it a hundred times and soon the doll had lush green woolen hair till her waist that my sister could comb to glory.

When my sister saw Aishwarya Rai become Miss India, she had a sudden urge to host a Miss World in our house. I again came to her rescue leaving my Hot Wheels cars and my plastic animals behind. I drew a lot of lovely women on paper wearing exquisite gowns and sashes of their countries. I then cut them and made them stand by pasting a thin cardboard strip near their legs. I made around 200 such drawings and gave them to my sister to play. She made all of them stand on a table and gave them a number and chose the next Miss World. Oh! How she loved it!

I found the lovely ladies in a box, lying on top of each other and smiling at me.

I found truckload of capacitors and resistors that my father used while repairing our old television. He had done a course in electronics and I would gawk at his notes with that immaculate writing and the complicated circuit diagrams. I found those notes.

I found Mom’s old black and white fairy photograph. When I came across the bag containing all the pictures, I desperately searched for her photo in which she was wearing a black pahari dress. As a child, I used to think that she was a fairy whenever I looked at that picture. I promised myself that I will get it framed. I found dad’s photograph in which he looked like Rakesh Roshan.

I found my old sketch book about which I blogged here.

I found a card with the picture of a village belle in the front and a sher written inside by my father. I found his wooden miniature airplane.

I found my kindergarten report card.

It was a beautiful day. The boxes that I had stacked away in my mind and completely forgotten were magically opened one by one. As the memories tumbled out, I thought that moving the house wasn’t a bad idea after all. It was refreshing. It took me to another era. It made me realize how much I have changed. It humbled me. But there was a nagging guilt that I was leaving the house behind. And then I felt as if my old house was smiling at me.

“You are not leaving me behind. I am in all of those pictures. I am the wall behind you. I am the floor on which you stand. I am coming with you,” it said.

Sometimes I pass that house and look at it from my car. Someone else is living there now. It is a part of another family.

Does it still remember me?

10 Commandments of driving in the country of Uttar Pradesh

The prosperous and vibrant country of Uttar Pradesh holds a special place in my heart. I am now officially a resident of this high on testosterone land. In such a short span of time, the Gun Ka Achaar, the poems of Ma Behen, the misty winters of cold shoulders and the daredevils on the pot-holed race tracks have taken my heart away.

The citizens of this country are a class apart. They work tirelessly towards bringing to life what the rest of the Indians consider unachievable. There are times when I have tears of happiness in my eyes while driving as I see everyone following the following 10 commandments of driving in this amazing country with such seriousness.

Thou Shalt driveth as in America

The citizens of this great nation realized long back that the fastest way to develop the country is to flip the way they drive. Driving in the wrong lane is not taboo here. In fact you will be amazed by the vehicles running in the wrong lanes. It gives you an instantaneous feeling that you are in America. It is a sign of progress. In fact any tourist who visits Uttar Pradesh immediately gets comfortable seeing the roads here after jumping from their hotel windows.

Thou shalt smirketh at the followers of the substandard rules

Now smirking and making fun of people who try to apply the rules followed in India is considered a privileged activity in the country of Uttar Pradesh. Outsiders are advised not to take it negatively. You really have to understand the emotion of the citizens behind this act. Try to drive in the wrong lane for a resounding acceptance. In fact, educated and well placed Delhiites who buy posh flats in NCR here end up following the American rules of driving. It is a matter of pride.

Thou shalt honketh for brotherly prodding

The enthusiasm with which the citizens of this great nation drive might drive an outsider crazy. The honking is like a symphony that reaches a rhythmic crescendo especially near traffic signals. Try listening to Beethoven’s 5th symphony while driving here and that might be the closet you will get to achieving nirvana. Honking is nothing more than brotherly prodding. It is a way to tell you that a bullet is always faster than the speed of your car.

Thou shalt achieveth orgasm jumping signals

The adventurous zeal with which the citizens here drive is commendable. It keeps the heart healthy as it keeps pumping at the rate of 150 bpm. It is a fantastic alternative to exercising in our busy lives. So, the next time you see UP-ites stopping at a signal not because it has turned red but because they are going to die otherwise, try to understand the smart logic behind it. Almost everyone (except a few sissies) in this great nation has a habit of jumping signals. Multiple jumps lead to multiple orgasms.

Thou shalt haveth no fear of traffic cops

The traffic cops are a non-existent entity in this great country. After living here for a while, it is evident to me that the country really don’t need them. The citizens take great care of each other in all sort of road related issues. There is so much caring and sharing that people have rods, bats, fists, honks and swearwords ready in case of an emergency. On exceptional occasions, even if there is a traffic cop standing next to the lamp-post remotely trying to streamline the traffic, he is royally ignored. He is similar to the lamp-post, only less useful.

Thou shalt enjoyeth pot-holed racing tracks

No matter how badly damaged the road is, the citizens of this great nation never take it to heart. Mostly, the speed of their cars is so high that they fly over the potholes. The act is therapeutic in nature. The constant flights and occasional jolts rejuvenate the body. Also, the mind remains in an alert state when so many cars are racing in the same direction. It is very similar to a computer game where rickshaws, cows and pedestrians are added to attain higher difficulty levels. Sometimes potholes are filled with sand and a few days later you might see a plant sprout out in the middle of the road.

Thou shalt decorateth the roads in red

Where else in the world will you see such ardor in the citizen of a nation where they can achieve the frightening feat of opening the door of a moving vehicle to spit on the road? In fact the citizens are so hell-bent on decorating the roads and give the nation a colorful appearance that at any point of time, you can see multiple doors opening on a road and paan flying out. It is almost like a synchronized performance of children sitting in a stadium with colorful placards.

Thou shalt useth traffic signboards for personal use

Since the country has such compassionate citizens, it is not surprising that the traffic sign boards are used for the benefit of the common citizens and politicians. So, you can see a ‘BOYS PG’ poster right over a ‘NO PARKING’ sign board. There might be a colorful mega posters of politicians draped on overhead sign-boards on highways. It is heart warming to see people using government resources for the benefit of all.

Thou shalt stopth anywhere you fancy

The citizens of this amazing nation do not believe in parking areas. Outsiders might be surprised by cars parked at unimaginable angles and in no parking zones but it exhibits the adjusting nature of the citizens. There are auto-rikshaws parked at busy intersections while their drivers pull helpless pedestrians inside. They even pull in men watering the walls midway in the act of donation. These acts (the pulling ones) restore my faith in mankind.

Thou shalt be fearless

Of course, despite all the brotherly love the citizens shower at each other, there are terrible accidents almost every day on the roads. It is a very common sight here to see weirdly crushed vehicles. Over the years, the citizens have developed a heart of steel and carry on abiding to the 10 commandments with the zeal of a warrior. They are the true heroes of the nation of Uttar Pradesh.

And in the end, I promise to follow the 10 commandments with all my heart.

I am proud to be a part of the brainless brotherhood.

My other posts on the same topic that might interest you -

A country called Uttar Pradesh

Traffic control gadgets for the ASIRW (Average Stupid Indian Road Warrior)

[Images from 1,2,3,4]

10 Disadvantages of being a Male

It is not easy being a man. Today when India is hit by a tsunami of Feminism, the men stand at crossroads. Should we jump in too and let go the flood of tears we have been holding since decades? We too have problems with the way the world and nature treats us. It is just that we bear our burdens in silence.

Here are the 10 biggest disadvantages of being a male.

No homemaking

There are times when we don’t feel like slogging. There are times when we are tired of wiping our boss’s spit from our face when he has finished shouting. We have to carry on the mundane task of being a cash machine. We are not even allowed to think about the alternative of letting our wives take that responsibility. How we wish to puff those pillows, dust those expensive showpiece, make dinner, raise our kids and be a perfect homemaker, but all those are distant dreams.

The Tennis Ball

Do you realize the kind of pressure we undergo when Momma and Mate pull us from both the ends? We are not allowed to sit and watch the tennis match between the two ladies because we are that ball. That ball, which is smacked violently and repeatedly in this never-ending match. We are supposed to take sides. Our eardrums hurt.

Road runner

There is always a war on the roads in India. A woman driver is given space and respect because everyone in her vicinity thinks that they will die otherwise. Men on the other hand have to jostle for each and every inch of a road amidst roaring honks and glaring swearwords. We are all Gladiators ready to beat the daylights out of each other.

Probably a rapist/child molester

We are at the end of our tethers trying to duck every woman and child out of our way. A slight brush of our hand on a woman’s skirt and we might be under a hailstorm of sandals. We might talk to a child with a smile and we might end up being pasted to the road by the his father’s SUV. Do you know how straining living like this is? We are a human bomb walking on needles. Of course there is the other end of the spectrum too, but they are more animals than men.

Shares. Stocks. Bonds. Budget.

Men are supposed to act smart. Even if we believe that shares are sung in a Mushaira and Bonds is the name given to all the girls who bonded with James Bond, we are supposed to act like Harshad Mehta. We should follow the rise and fall of the stock market like a Bollywood actress’s bosoms in a dance number. The latest budget should be on our tips if we want some respect.

Under a lens. Always.

Ever since we open our eyes, we are under constant scrutiny. Our parents burden us with all their unfulfilled dreams as if we are a cargo ship. Then we spend the rest of our lives dodging our wives as they suspiciously go through our shirts for a whiff of an affair, our bosses as they take a smelly dump on our career and our children who start treating us as losers the moment they develop sex organs. When we are old, the nurse treats us as an unwanted cockroach that she is too scared to crush under her feet. Ditto for our children.

Sports Journal

Even though the only sport we are good at is the in-the-night-no-control types, we are supposed to have passionate knowledge about a sport, preferably cricket. God forbid if we confess that we are not interested in it or do not remember the color of the underwear Sachin wore in an unforgettable 1993 series, we will be immediately shunned like a woman carrying an illegitimate child. Knowing about Soccer, Baseball and Rugby is an added advantage. It is not easy to be a walking encyclopedia on sports when all you really like is burgers and breasts.

The rise and fall of Junior

The problem with junior is that it is like an alien entity attached between our legs. Like the Ring of the dark Lord, it has a will of its own. It sometimes rises with the Sun and refuses to subside. It refuses to rise and shine when it is actually required to because of performance issues. It rises at the most inappropriate of places and thus has to be covered up with whatever props we can muster – a book, a lost puppy, a bowl snatched from a beggar. Compare this to women – they might be aroused even in a funeral and not a single soul will know. They could be walking on the street, sitting in a bus or sleeping in a room full of guests and no one will ever point at a hill between their legs and laugh. Oh! The pleasure of that freedom!

Facade

Since childhood we are brainwashed into being a real man who don’t cry, who does not take but give emotional support and who can break a jaw at the drop of a hat. Basically we should be robotic providers who do not go beyond a Hmmm when our children run towards us screaming that they have been selected in IIT. It is taxing. We feel desperately like crying at times, we sometimes wish we could treat our children as friends, sit with our wives and pour our heart out but we can’t. We feel unmanly with the mere thought of it. Instead we get drunk and scream swearwords at strangers on roads.

Dispensable. Always.

Yes! She could have saved him!

What boils our blood is that whenever a tragedy strikes or there is a war, we are the ones who are left to die. Women and children are the first ones to be saved. If time and situation permits, men are given a thought. Remember when the Titanic sank? Men were left on that sinking shit while women and children sat on lifeboats and saw the show. Rose had a whole goddamn wooden plank! Why are we always so dispensable? Just because we are in excess and selectively chosen over girls to live does not mean we don’t have a life and can be treated like a street dog.

So you see, it isn’t all that rosy for us men too. The world has been subjugating us in its own way. Nature have had it’s revenge too as we can’t even have pleasure at our own convenience. We are living in unbreakable molds like a Mummy and there is no escape.

[image from 1,2,3]

The Middle Finger Awards 2012

Welcome to the Middle Finger Awards 2012 presented by Mashed Musings. The awards honors the best news makers of 2012 in various categories. We are committed to an unbiased and honest approach toward selecting the nominees and the winners. If you have any concerns about any of the winners not deserving his/her award, please keep it to yourself.
So, lets begin the ceremony.

*Drum rolls. Trumpets Blaring*

Here is the first category :

The Middle Finger Award for the Most Courageous act of 2012

And the nominees are :

Dr. Manmohan Singh – for gathering enough courage to address the nation 7 days after the protests and letting everyone know that he too is a father and there aren’t enough commandoes protecting his daughters. Theek hai?

Sheila Dixit - for having the courage to come to Jantar Mantar and lightening something that looked like a half burnt candle while the crowd booed her.

Anushka Sharma – for wearing a blue XXL vest in Kashmir for a Yash Chopra movie.

Delhi Police Chief, Neeraj Kumar - for his courageous act to save Delhi Police from further shame and twisting facts. Apparently, he hasn’t heard the story of the shepherd and the wolf.

Madhura Honey – for her courageous act of walking with the Indian team in Olympics opening ceremony in a red top and blue jeans looking completely out of place. Just like all those students in Student of the Year.

And the Middle Finger goes to *drum rolls* Manmohan Singh!!!! For his courageous bland as boiled pasta speech to pacify the nation.

Our next category is :

The Middle Finger Award for the Most limelight hungry Indian of 2012

The nominees are -

Abhijit Mukherjee – for the dented painted comment and letting Indians know that the President has a big mouthed son.

Kailash Vijayvargiya, Madhya Pradesh Minister – for talking about Laxman Rekha when he should have actually zipped it up.

Banwari Lal Singhal, BJP MLA, Rajasthan – for being disturbed by girls wearing skirts as he found it difficult to take his eyes off their legs.

Haryana Khaps – for leaving no stone unturned to be on national media and make us realize that humans haven’t completely evolved from apes.

Dharamvir Goyat, Haryana Congress member – for sharing his pearls of wisdom with us about 90% of rape cases being consensual.

And the Middle Finger goes to *drum rolls* the Haryana Khaps for their consistency in churning out drivel!!!

Our next category is :

The Middle Finger Award for The Best Blind Eye of 2012.

The nominees are -

Delhi Police – for using teargas, water cannons and Lathis on college students and women and then wondering why people threw stones at them.

BJP ministers in Karnataka – for turning a blind eye towards all the cameras pointed at them as they enjoyed porn in the assembly.

Indian Citizens – for craving for popcorn while they circled the rape victim lying naked, shivering and bleeding on the road.

Indian Politicians – for ignoring thousands of rape victims till waves of people came out on roads and threw stones.

Vijay Mallya – for donating 3 Kg gold to Tirupati temple while his employees went without salary for months.

And the Middle Finger goes to *drum rolls* the Indian Citizens for achieving the impossible of turning back the clock of human evolution.

Lets move to the next category which is :

The Middle Finger Award for the Most Confused Indian

The nominees are -

Pratibha Patil – for pardoning rapists and murderers and getting confused about her right to not to be a puppet who has to sign a pardon when asked.

Sushil Kumar Shinde – for confusing students with Maoists.

Arvind Kejriwal – for confusing the nation by jumping from one issue to another and giving everyone a terrible headache.

Saif Ali Khan – for his role in the movie Cocktail where he confused the audience in the first half into believing that he wasn’t playing an assho*e.

Delhi Police - for discussing confusing matters of jurisdiction as the rape victim and her friend lay on the road naked and bleeding.

And the Middle Finger goes to *drums roll* Pratibha Patil for letting loose deranged criminals on the society.

The next category is :

The Middle Finger Award for the most Dramatic Indian of 2012

And the nominees are -

Salman Khurshid – for his saas Bahu dialogues about replacing ink with blood if Arvind Kejriwal tried to enter his domain. No shit.

Robert Vadra – for collecting unmatched black wealth, mocking the nation and then getting away with it by saying something with a mango and banana in it.

Mamata Banerjee – for her histrionics by equating rapes to political conspiracies and asking profound questions like why men and women are allowed to mingle in our society.

Ponty brothers – for their swift and fortunate exit from the world.

Suresh Kalmadi – for having the nerve to express his desire to attend Olympics after being released on bail for the CWG scam.

And the Middle Finger goes to *drum rolls* Robert Vadra for his unmatched feat of taking the whole nation for a ride.

The next category is :

The Middle Finger Award of the most Senselessly Swift Indian of 2012

The nominees are -

Mumbai Police – for their swift response in arresting two girls for stating the truth on Facebook.

Delhi Police – for swiftly arresting 8 random men after a constable died in the protests and filing an FIR without any proof.

Akbaruddin Owaisi - for swiftly going underground in London after his arrest warrant was out in India.

Indian Government – for swiftly moving the rape victim to Singapore when it became apparent that she was not going to live.

The Dengue Mosquito – for swiftly taking away the king of romance, Yash Chopra in the blink of an eye.

And the Middle Finger goes to *drums roll* The Indian Government for acting in the nick of time to save themselves from the blame of the rape victim’s death.

The Middle Finger Lifetime Achievement Award

The  award goes to the man who held a whole city to ransom for years, who divided the country on the basis of the state in which you live and who wore sunglasses even in dark rooms – Shri Balasaheb Thackeray.

That’s it for this year folks! We sincerely hope that the viewers enjoyed the awards ceremony and congratulations to the most deserving winners. We will be back next year with more fun filled categories!!!

[image from 1, 2, 3]

Sari-nama

Ever since Dushasan pulled Draupadi’s sari like a magician pulls out linked handkerchiefs from a hat, the Indian male woke up to the sexiness of sari. There is so much that a sari can reveal that even though women tried their best to cover themselves up with T-shirts and jeans, men frothed at their mouth and gave cultural references to stop the extinction of the aphrodisiacal attire.

We all know that a sari reveals more than a western dress. Imagine Sridevi in Mr. India wearing a skirt instead of that blue sari when she flattened her lips on the lips of an invisible Mr. India and you will suck the oomph out of the song. Imagine Dimple wearing a Salwar Kameez in Saagar instead of a red sari as Rishi Kapoor does a Dushasan with her water soaked pallu and he would not have waited for her to say – Jaane Do na. Imagine Raveena in a mini skirt doing a tip-tip barsa paani with Akshay jungle Kumar and the authenticity would have been lost. It is surprising that even when a sari has been used as a sex toy in our movies, our cultural self-appointed hounds endorse it with the intensity with which Bhagyashree endorsed Himalaya.

Coming back to real life, a lot of women hate the wrapper. The primary reason is that it is completely unmanageable while you work in your office. Secondly, no one has the time to leisurely drape herself in the morning when your husband is screaming in your ear because he can’t find his towel and your child is pulling your hair because his bag is not ready. Wearing a sari is like making a dish for the MasterChef finale. You really can’t fast forward the process.

Who gave me the authority to talk on the subject? Well, I have seen women in my family grope with the endless piece of cloth. Their pain haunts me.

I have witnessed swarms of angry waves that swirl out of my mother’s eyes when she has to wear a sari. She likes Saris but only when they are hanging like slaughtered pigs in her almirah. She sometimes reluctantly wears them and ends up vowing never to touch them again. Geet and I bought her a really expensive sari recently for a cousins wedding who lives  in a hill-station. She did not wear it. ‘You want me to get entangled in bushes and fall off the cliff?’ she asked. The said sari sleeps in her almirah, maybe till the end of humanity.

Yeah! If it was that easy!

My sister wore a sari at my wedding. She was at the end of her tethers throughout and looked as if she would fall to pieces if anyone poked her. Before that, the only time I remember her wearing a sari was when she was in class 6th and turned into Indira Gandhi for a fancy dress competition. She went on stage, raised her finger and forgot her line. I still have her photograph somewhere wearing a white sari with a blue border, trying to remember her dialogue with a raised finger looking like a roll of cloth wrapped on a rod.

So when Geet entered the house with two large suitcases full of saris, I thought that the attire will now get some respect in our house. The saris are still lying in those suitcases, wrapped and untouched. A few of them came out occasionally for weddings but boy! what a tornado that was. Usually, helping Geet wear a sari leads to these situations :

• Deep discussions about which sari to wear for at least a week before the function. If she has to wear one to school for special occasions, then the duration is reduced to 2-3 days. This includes taking out the contender saris and answering questions like – Why do you think this is better? Why not the other one? Give logical explanation.
• Help with the accessories. There should be matching things to wear in the neck, arms and ears. Matching sandals. Matching lipstick. Matching nail-polish. And a matching husband. Well, there isn’t much of a choice there.
• Wake up 30 minutes before time on D-Day.
• On the D-Day, help her wear the sari. Squat in front of her and hold the pleats of the sari in the correct position while she tucks them in. This gets really frustrating at times because it is never done correctly the first time. Re-pleat and try again. If it fails three times in a row, yell for mom.
• If it a cotton sari, hide in the bathroom.

Needless to say, Geet was as affectionate towards a sari as the rest of the female pack in the house.

The fact that Indians managed to invent something so difficult to wear goes completely against their image in my mind. Aren’t we supposed to be utterly lazy? Going by that parameter, wouldn’t we invent attires which are less time consuming to wear? But we invented sari, dhoti and pagdi which are enough to entangle yourself in so many layers. I have never worn a dhoti but I am sure I will fall flat on my face after taking two steps. Men in cities have completely given up the historical attires but it hasn’t changed for women. It is strange that we attach Indian-ness to it. If I am an Indian male who wears jeans or a suit, then why a woman is not being Indian if she wears a skirt or jeans? It seems that in addition to what we wear to cover our skin, we also wear a halo of double standards.

Anyways, I am very sorry for all the saris lying neglected in my house. All I can tell them is that destiny must have something else stored for them. One of them was turned into a Jaipuri Razai sometime back. I am wondering if they can also me used to make pillow covers, handkerchiefs, table cloths, kitchen towels, mop clothes, car covers, men’s kurta etc etc. Has anyone tried making any of this with a sari?

[images from 1,2,3]

Pigeon mummies of Pisa bouncing on a wall

Spending 4 hours every day sitting in a bus can play havoc with your mind. After your initial despair regarding wastage of four precious hours of your life starts to dwindling, you devise multiple strategies to kill time. After all how much can a human possibly whine?

For a lot of people, those multiple strategies end up in a recycle bin and all they could manage is to get a nice sleep while the bus bobbles its way to their house. I usually end up reading and sleeping alternately. Sometimes I also take interest in cars running along with the bus and count the number of traffic rules broken by various vehicles in 5 minutes. I usually stop at 1000 or when I fall asleep with my mouth open, whichever happens first. Witnessing law breaking does get boring after a while. It’s like watching the same porn movie again and again. I also end up observing the people sitting around me in the bus, their necks moving to various positions as they try to push themselves into their wonderland.

So to kill time one fine day, I made a list of sleeping positions I have seen fellow passengers indulge in and a few interpretations based on that.

a)  The Pigeon: This category of bus-sleepers keep moving their heads back and forth at an alarming rate in the YZ plane as shown in the graph below. They look like pigeons walking on a railing. Mashed Musings believe that the people who sleep like this are bad decision makers as they keep moving to and fro and confuse everyone around them.

The Pigeon moves in the YZ plane

b) Shut up and bounce :  Remember those toys filled with air and no matter how much you punched them, they bounced right back? Some people sleep like that in a bus. They will move their head to the right and smash it on the window. The impact will throw their head towards the left and hit your shoulder. This will repeat in rhythmic oscillations. Even if you remove the window and your shoulder, such sleepers have this amazing capability to bounce off air on both sides of their head. Mashed Musings thinks that such people are selfish leaners and would always use another person for their benefit.

Shutup and bounce in the XY plane

c)  Laser dot on a wall : Remember those times when you are watching a movie in a cinema hall and suddenly a laser dot appears from somewhere and carves a devious, random trajectory on the blouse of the actress? Well, some people sleep like that laser dot. Their head wobbles in so many directions that if you steadily look at them, your eyes will hurt. They are like a mad bull poking anything that comes their way. Mashed Musings wonder how people sleep like a God particle ramming the walls of the Hadron collider. Such people are decision-less and spend the maximum amount of time in Big Bazaar.

Laser Dot moves in any direction in the XYZ plane

d) Leaning towers of Pisa : Such travellers lean on either their left or right and peacefully remain there. They might lean on your shoulder or a windowpane depending on your misfortune. The biggest disadvantage of such co-passengers is that if you try to change their leaning preference by poking their head with a finger and shoving it to the other side, they will fall right back to their original position like a detonated building. So, if they have nested on your shoulder, then your shoulder it will be. Mashed Musings thinks that such people have very strong likes and dislikes and are quiet stubborn. And try to keep a tissue between heads and shoulder otherwise you will be drenched in drool in the morning.

e) The Mummies : You are really blessed if you are sleeping next to a mummy in a bus. Mummies sleep like dead bodies and won’t make a sound. They are dream co-passengers and only a few chosen ones encounter them. It is needless to say that Mashed Musings belongs to this category. Such sleepers are highly focussed and most peaceful creatures and do not lean on anyone.

The saintly Mummy

You might be wondering why there is no category for the Snoring Devils. That is because snoring can be combined with any of the categories mentioned above (except for the Mummies). It is a nightmarish combination, the deadliest one being a ‘Snoring Leaning Tower of Pisa’. And imagine a ‘Snoring laser dot on a wall’. That would be like a short-circuited Darth Vader. Very unpleasant.

So, which category do you belong to? Now don’t be shy. Out with it.

Say this hypo, mean that crisy

1 ## He drives really well.

He breaks every traffic rule, drives as if his car is a batpod, is traffic signal blind, experience orgasms by honking, derives sadistic pleasure by making people run in front of his car.

2 ## She is a homely girl

She knows how to knead dough, doesn’t talk to strange boys, loves to cry while cutting onions, worships Balaji Telefilms, comes with a remote control, has cobwebs between her legs.

3 ## He is a homely Boy

Does not know what an erection is, urinates in his pants when a girl comes and say ‘Hi’, puts loads of oil in his hair, stammers while talking to his father, eats food only from the hands of his mother, watches Jai Santoshi Maa.

4 ## He is very rich

He is malevolent, is politically connected, has goons available on the snap of his fingers, does not remember the face of his children, has an extramarital affair, has a sobbing sexually deprived gorgeous wife at home who is having an affair with the gardener, has a high-class bitch of a mother, must die of AIDS.

5 ## His wife is too modern

She goes to gym, wears body hugging clothes, shows her enviable cleavage profusely, has a social circle of spoilt rich ladies like her, does not cook for her family, has a very depressed husband at home, drinks like a fish, has a shocked mother-in-law who wonders what she has got her son into.

6 ## She is a very good actress

She has done loads of semi nude dance numbers, has worked with all top heroes, has big breasts, has the same laughing and crying face, is a virgin, is beautiful, is white.

7 ## All politicians are corrupt

I do not have as much money as those illiterate bastards have; I want a Swiss bank account, I want that power. I want to be a politician so that I could earn that money. My life is pathetic. God hates me.

8 ## My only solace is in the feet of Gods

I donate loads of money to temples, I donate my hair, I give milk bath to the Gods, I follow all the top religious gurus, I help build temples in parks meant for children. I hate other religions. My God bestest.

9 ## What was she doing outside the pub at 12?

How dare she have a life? How can others enjoy when I am suffering my boring miserable existence? How can a woman have such freedom? I completely support molestation of the bitch. She is a slave. Rape her. She deserves it because she is not my sister.

10 ## The maid is a part of our family

I give food to her in a separate plate, she sits and sleeps on the floor, she is not allowed to touch my food, she is a potential thief and I have to be careful, she might murder me for the gold I have bought with my black money, she is a low life.

11 ## Poor, hungry people!

Thank God it is not me in their place, filthy people, they are a menace to the society, that is where criminals come from, don’t encourage begging, let them die – that is the best way to wipe them out. Someone incinerate them!

12 ## What a marriage!

They spent lakhs on the decoration, they must have given a heavy dowry, the bride and groom looked like an extension of the red carpet, the quantity of food could have fed the entire population of Zimbabwe, pride = show-off = puffy chests, my marriage was pathetic.

13 ## What a movie!

The hero stood on two running horses, we laughed on comic sequences which won’t make a mentally stable person laugh; the heroine had bucket butts, the hero killed ten goons by throwing them at the moon, jeeps and tomato ketchup flew, there was a romantic song after the hero’s family was butchered.

14 ## I need a cultured girl for my son

I need a maid who works for free, I need a girl who produces male heirs, I need a hen who lays golden eggs, I need a slave who follows my finger. I am the queen of this 2 bedroom flat. I will die a queen. Only I will buy underwear for my son.

15 ## I belong to a cultured family

I don’t have a brain, I take permission from my parents every time I pick my nose, I don’t have any hobbies other than making money and watching porn, my parents have a long pokey nose and we breed girls as cows.

16 ## We don’t need any dowry

I hope you are wise enough to understand what we mean *wink wink*? Make sure your daughter is not visible under the layers of jewellery, don’t give any stupid middle class cars, our family is shitty because we sell our son, our son is a mule.

17 ## Your girlfriend drinks? Wow!

She must be good in bed, you must be having a great time in cinema halls. Lucky bastard! My girlfriend sucks. I want your slutty girlfriend.

Same City Different Light

A few days back I went to my office for an implementation. I had to reach office at 6 am which meant I had to leave home at around 4:45. The cab driver woke me up at 4.10 am because he could not find my home and I ended up being his GPS for the next 15 minutes and choked on my toothbrush in the process.

As I sat in the car and covered the distance to my office in 1 hour which I usually cover in 2 hours during peak rush hour, I felt disoriented. Dawn looked like a struggle to me. I hadn’t experienced Delhi in this light. I was expecting at least a façade of calmness.

The streetlights were wrestling with the Sun to maintain their dominion over the roads. I saw them fight a losing battle as the Sun attacked the roads the streetlights had held with such élan all night. It was a clash the streetlights fought and lost every day but that never dissuaded them from putting up a worthy fight.

There were hoards of trucks on the roads, especially on the highway and the Ring road. The car looked like a petrified deer passing through a herd of elephants. The driver was doing his best to remain wide awake, popping out his eyes and alarmingly touching them to the windshield.

A tired truck driver stopped his truck in a corner of the road, stepped down and laid on the footpath. He covered himself with the quilt of the bright yellow glow of the streetlight. He could not bear the weariness anymore. He had to sleep before he could carry on with his nomadic life. I looked at him and thought – he must be bone tired. How else can someone sleep on a stone? I wished I could turn off the streetlight but the Sun was already winning the war.

Traffic policemen were stopping random trucks trying to collect money for the future of their children. There was no remorse – only the crunching sound of a bigger fish eating a smaller one. Morality looked like a fish bone stuck in their throat. They either had to spit it out or die. In a way, the truck driver and the policeman were like the streetlamp and the Sun – each one fighting a battle of their own.

Patches of men, women and children were sleeping on the footpaths, covered with dirty sheets of cloths and plastic, just like dead bodies pulled out of a train wreck. The fight will be delayed in winters. There will be times when the army of Sunrays would not bother to come and someone will give euthanasia to the tired streetlights much before the battle begins. The humans of the streets will have to find some more tattered pieces of clothes to cover themselves up, burn a worn out tyre, find a shed, cocoon each other.

The roads were near empty once we crossed the Ring road. I noticed the symmetry – the equally placed streetlights, the blob of lights passing through the windows of the car like a heartbeat on a monitor, the lane markings blurring into a single line. It was tranquil without the chaos of humans, without the display of their feeble egos, without their bodies lying on cold stones. But then, a monster bird flew over the car, hiding its wheels and the momentary serenity was broken by its deafening wail.  

My office stood like a morgue. The usual receptionist was replaced by a yawning man, ready to devour the phone. For once, the lift moved towards me on my command, not jostling to serve someone else before me. The flight to the 7^th floor was effortless – a perfect cuboid being pulled away from Earth by pulleys without a halt. The floor was deserted; a sole tube light was taking its last breath.

I sat on my computer and did the implementation. In two hours, men and women started pouring in, filling the room with randomness. I looked out of the room. The city was recognizable now as the multitude churned in their chores. The Sun had won the war. The streetlights were picking up their wounded, getting ready for the battle in the evening. A battle they were destined to win. 

Tattoo tales of a diagonally cursed mortal

                                                                                                    [image from here]

I do not remember when my mind started tilting towards it but around three-four years back, I started to have this sudden urge to get a tattoo. It was like a sudden urge to eat ice-cream at 4 am when you are pregnant (a Bollywood infused observation). The urge was fanned after my stint in lands across seven seas where every second human and every fourth dog has a tattoo. I was not very sure which part of my body was the most eligible for the permanent ink. I knew that the blackness will definitely not adorn my butt, my chest and my stomach mainly because I could not imagine a guy squeezing my butt and chest for 2 hours to produce his masterpiece. And I considered getting a tattoo on my stomach too dangerous. Imagine Marilyn Munroe’s legs opening wider and wider with my expanding belly while she helplessly tries to put her skirt back in place as I complete more and more revolutions around the sun.

I typed “tattoo+funny” in Google and it threw insane ideas at me (try it!) which basically reconfirmed the fact that humans are weird. I then decided to go with something simpler and so an arm-band it was. I kind of find them sexy mainly because they can be flaunted. How many humans are going to see my butt anyways unless I am John Abraham thrusting his nakedness on cultured Indian families? Now tattoos are very very expensive. You can buy a tiny diamond with that kind of money for your wife. The plan had started to stink in a corner of my mind when I found a deal on Snapdeal.com where I was getting an almost 10,000 Rs Tattoo for 1299 Rs. I rubbed my eyes till I almost eroded my eyelid and landed in the shop after taking an appointment.

A word of caution – All your dreams of parading your tattooed arm would vaporize the moment the needle hits your skin. You will require great courage similar to that of a superhero to brave that needle for the next two hours. I did everything like

• Holding the bed with my spare hand like I was holding on to the sinking Titanic before it broke into two.

• Biting my tongue almost into two and drink my blood. I do not understand what is so enthralling about human blood that the vampires can’t leave us alone. Like a Master chef Judge, I told myself that there was too much salt in it for my taste.

• Remembering my happiest memory like Harry Potter did to master the ‘Expecto patronum’ charm.

• Embracing the pain. I read somewhere that if you concentrate too hard on the pain; you won’t feel it after sometime. Fuc*ing lie!

• NOT scream. Yes, I did not scream. I think that is my biggest achievement in all my living memory.

The end result was grand but it hurt like hell and there was something oozing all through the Tattoo. The artist wrapped it with tissue and tied a cello tape around it. I had to apply ointment on it for ten days and had to take whole lot of precautions like not exposing it to the sun and taking a bath after covering the tattoo with 13 layers of Vaseline. It felt as if I had a bloody operation.

When I came out of the shop, Geet had one look at the bloodied tissue and narrowed her eyes. I grinned.

“He gave money to someone to drill holes in him and blacken his skin and blood-spatter his arm,” she told her mom who was with us in the car.

“Um-hmm. Men!” my mum-in-law mumbled.

Cleaning the wound with wipes and rubbing the ointment on it was painful. I could not sleep properly for two nights because of the fear that I would wipe off the oozing black liquid on the bed. By the fourth day, the liquid has stopped flowing out of me but it was still paining.

Now you may ask what in the name of Beelzebub a diagonal curse is.

Well, a few days before I was attacked by the machines, I picked up an ear bud and wacked my ear so hard with it that it went numb (the ear not the bud) and I felt as if someone has slapped me hard. I could not hear anything from my left ear and this went on for a week.

I finally went to the E.N.T specialist after I got exhausted of knotting my brows while straining to hear and pushing people towards my right ear like a granny. The specialist told me that there is pus and truck load of earwax in my left ear. A little longer and we could have extracted some sort of earwax diamonds out of that mine. Don’t ask me how all that got in there because honestly I don’t have an effing idea.

“But I shine my eardrums every week!” I was aghast.

“Your right eardrum is shining. In fact I can see my face in it. It seems you have been pushing the wax inside your left one while cleaning it and hence the pileup,” the specialist explained patiently.

And here I thought that it was not humanly possible to bury your own eardrum. All it needed now was an epitaph.

She started extracting wax from my ear and it was so painful because of the pus that I screamed at her to stop before she pulls out my whole brain from my ear.

She gave me some antibiotics and wax melting drops and let me go before I could start crying. First that tattoo sitting like a slimy snail on my arm and now this ear with a beehive inside it. Oh! How I wanted to go and lie in the lap of Mother Teresa and cry my heart out.

So, there I was, attending phone calls with my left hand holding the phone on my right ear, my left arm like a diagonal of a rectangle. I kind of looked funny because no one in his right mind would do that and people did give me some funny looks.

The tattoo is doing fine although there are still 3 days to go before I can stop treating it like an injured bird. The wax is still melting like the Antarctic ice caps and I have to visit the wax digger soon. Although I still feel permanently slapped, I hope I will get rid of this upheaval in my perfect life soon.

Ending this narcissist post on a personal note, here is a picture of my tattoo.

That’s my tattoo. Now close your mouth.

p.s. After I wrote this post, I came across Blogadda’s Most memorable online shopping contest. Although this post is more of a rant but I did rub my eyelids when I saw that deal on Snapdeal, didn’t I? If it was not for Snapdeal, I would have to take a Tattoo loan to get this beauty on my arm.

This post is a part of the contest at BlogAdda.com in association with Snapdeal.com